Dogs deserve a pat for benign intervention

Be the face of fast food. Be the face of peptides. Be the face of hemorrhoids. But sack your manager if he even suggests you be the face of the NRL.

Brett Stewart, Todd Carney, Benji Marshall. They could have told Ben Barba that. Only Manly's opening night double act, Daly Cherry-Evans and Kieran Foran, have avoided the "curse of the face" in recent years. Is the weight of being the most prominent figure in a serially beleaguered game too much for one man to bear?

"Multitude of problems" ... Ben Barba has been stood down by the Bulldogs indefinitely to face his demons. Photo: Getty Images

The absence of Barba's smiling face from Wednesday night's NRL launch is sad. Not because the NRL will start the season without one of its most luminous stars. But because the imposition of an indefinite suspension by the Bulldogs is – without adding any lurid details – enough to make it clear Barba is confronting serious personal problems.

An ambitious club with an intensely driven coach does not suspend its match-winning full-back on the eve of the season because he didn't finish a lap at training or because he left his car in the chairman's parking spot. The concern for Barba's welfare, and for those around him, has been deemed more important than team performance. In professional sport, that is as serious as it gets.

Related Content

This was supposed to be a week of great expectation, even great excitement, for the NRL. The new season launched with a new boss and new opportunities created by the rights-deal millions. Instead, on Monday, there was only an old problem and a small blessing – the professional manner in which the Bulldogs dealt with Barba's increasingly erratic behaviour.

Too often, clubs have abrogated their responsibility to player welfare or misbehaviour. Mostly, it has been left for the NRL administration to clean up the mess. So often did former chief executive David Gallop put on his fireman's helmet, people started to think he was auditioning for the Village People.

Advertisement

The overwrought reaction by some clubs to the Australian Crime Investigation into corruption in Australian sport - something publicly supported by the NRL - did not help the league, or its image. One week into the job, new NRL chief executive Dave Smith was caught in the crossfire instead of leading a united game.

But by acting swiftly and of their own accord when confronted with the evidence of Barba's personal problems, the Bulldogs ensured the NRL was - for once - not caught on the back foot. When the Bulldogs' chief executive Todd Greenberg contacted Smith at 10pm Sunday, the club had a clear course of action. A pre-emptive strategy to ensure a high-profile player did no further damage to himself and, consequently, the game. This was a leap forward from the usual scenario whereby the NRL reads about a star player's behavioural problems in the morning paper and, subsequently, have to browbeat his club into taking meaningful action.

The Bulldogs' pre-emptory intervention will not dull the appetite for details. When the reigning Dally M medallist is withdrawn by his club on the eve of the season, there is a reasonable chance people will want to know - precisely - why. However, the Bulldogs have at least made Barba's welfare the most significant issue. Accordingly, it should be ours.

Barba is loved, well beyond the Bulldogs' fiercely parochial heartland, because of his delicate mixture of breathtaking skill and obvious fragility. The way he bounced off the irresistible behemoth Greg Inglis while attempting a tackle was simultaneously heartwarming and hilarious. The flea biting the elephant.

If, during his recent travails, Barba has harmed only himself, then we should have the same sense of compassion we feel when he stands beneath a high ball with the rampaging heavyweights charging towards him. Barba is, clearly, a disoriented, perhaps unsophisticated figure in a challenging environment made even more complex by his fame and fortune.

One, it seems, with a new sense of self-awareness. In his statement, Barba said he did not know when he would return. "When I do, I hope that everybody sees a better person." Someone who, in turn, provides a better face for the game.